MORE ON VENEZUELA – OPEN LETTER TO AOC
The motive behind neoliberalism is perpetuation of ruling class power and American international power, and the mechanics are fourfold: capture competitor nations in an American-dominated system, exploit the markets of weaker nations, ensure net flows of wealth from peripheral nations to sustain US consumption, and lock peripheral nations into debt and dependency as leverage to control how they do business.
It was this system that Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian movement challenged, and opposition to neoliberalism is precisely what put this movement in the gunsights of the US ruling class and its colonial surrogates in Venezuela. Because it is not the popular leaders (like Zelaya, Chavez, Aristide) that are the primary threat. They focus the threat, and thereby increase it, but the real threat is popular rule. The coup in progress in Venezuela is not against Maduro, per se, but against the majority of poor, non-white Venezuelans.
If this propaganda works, the people will resist, and all in the resistance are already pre-demonized by precisely the kind of propaganda you have been clickbaited into repeating. And mark my words, if that resistance is met with a US invasion, it could turn into a bloodbath. The overwhelming majority of Venezuelans will oppose it, and many will actively fight. I have been to Venezuela, seen the racial/class hierarchy up close, drank Polarcitas with them into the wee hours over pollo asado, and walked the mountains with them. They will not back down. They will never accept a foreign army. And a good deal of the armed forces are loyal to the Venezuelan Constitution — the military stopped the last overt US coup attempt in 2002.
Do any of us want to be complicit in this? Do not repeat the assertions that are paving the way.
The coup in progress is not just Trump; it is Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack …..
